Parenting for Dummies (feat. burying beetles)

Festive greetings readership,

On a gloomy, mist-filled night, the life of a mouse is gently extinguished by disease. Its blood stills, its body cools, and a slight wind carries its almost imperceptible scent through the air. A faint buzzing approaches from the darkness, growing louder and louder; a flash of jet-black and red in the moonlight. Another. Then… silence. Two beetles scamper onto the carcass after their nightly flights. They are burying beetles, a male and a female, and have much to do over the next 2-3 weeks.

Night takes Queen: where do all the wasps go in winter?

Season’s greetings readership,

As I type, millions of Vespula vulgaris (‘common wasp’) queens are in a deep slumber within dead logs, sheds, attic spaces, burrows, and innumerable other areas out of the British elements. Because all other members of a wasp colony die over winter, the survival of the queen is vital to regenerate populations in the spring and summer. But this process is far from simple, incorporating physiological and behavioural adaptations that must be timed accurately to prevent freezing, parasitism, predation,and starvation. The journey of a queen wasp is quite an incredible one involving death, opposition, sex, family, altruism, resurrection, and prejudice, and I would like to personally recommend it as a superior alternative to the biblical prose to which we are flooded at this time of year.

It’s the final essay! Also: What can you expect to see from us in the future?

Greetings readership.

Here we have the final scholarship essay, soon be published in the Royal Entomological Society’s members’ magazine, Antenna. Its author is Siobhan Anne-Marie Hillman. She developed her love of entomology whilst studying at the University of Derby, graduating with a BSc in Zoology. Siobhan’s main interests are in

Friday brings many good things. Nevermind the weekend, we love hymenopterans.

Greetings readership.

Friday brings us many things. Many good things (besides the end of the week).

Today, the students taking the Biology and Taxonomy of Insects module on the Applied Ecology suite of MSc courses here at Harper Adams University were treated to a day consisting entirely of Hymenoptera-related (wasps, bees and ants) lessons, from Dr Andrew Polaszek, of the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London. Starting the day off with an overview of the Order, Dr. Polaszek went on to characterise the super-families using morphological and ecological definitions. The class later went on to try our hand at the initially daunting task of  identifying specimens to super-family, family or genus level based on various keys. The fact that the majority of students were able to identify the specimens shows the quality of the keys and the direction Dr. Polaszek gave to us. By the end of the afternoon, most students had been identifying specimens for 2h30m, with the majority actively enjoying the process, and improving over the course of the day.